[69]. Job iv. 7 seq.
Chapter VI
THE FIRST CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW
[70]. Σύριος means scarcely more than “Oriental” in Aeschylus (Persae, 81, Σύριον ἅρμα; and Ag. 1312, Σύριον ἀγλάϊσμα).
[71]. Except Hittite and Amorite, these names have no non-Biblical occurrence.
[72]. Caphthor is rendered Cappadocia in the LXX (Amos ix. 7), for no better reason, it may be, than the similarity between the first syllables. The Keftiu ships of the Egyptian monuments are scarcely other than Mycenean, and if they came from Crete, Minoan (Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, ii. 492). That the Philistines are of Cretan origin is, in the absence of monumental sources, a pure theory. It fits in well, however, with what we do know of them.
[73]. The Jews were commanded by Ezra to put away their “strange wives” (Ezra x. 10) for the specific reason that the latter incited them to idolatry. Instances of intermarriage occur in the papyri from Elephantine (see ch. IV., n. 3).
[74]. Datis and Artaphernes commanded the Persian troops defeated at Marathon, 490 B.C.E. Mardonius was defeated at Plataea in 479.
[75]. Joel iii. 6. There is nothing in the extant Book of Joel inconsistent with a pre-Exilic date. Such slave raids as the Phoenicians are here accused of making, the Greeks made freely in Homeric times, and Greek merchants were already in every mart. In the famous picture of a golden age in Isaiah, Jewish captives are to be assembled “from Assyria, Egypt—and from the islands of the sea” (Isaiah xi. 11), a passage indubitably pre-Exilic. The “islands of the sea,” however, are obviously Greek.
[76]. In the lexicon of Stephen of Byzantium (s. v.) we read Σύροι κοινὸν ὄ νομα πολλῶν ἐθνῶν. Strabo, writing in the time of Augustus, includes most of the nations of Asia Minor, such as the Cappadocians, etc., under that term (xvi. 2).
[77]. The famous Harpy-tomb from Xanthus in Lycia, now in the British Museum, dates from the sixth century. It is, however, so highly developed a work that it presupposes a long history of mutual artistic influence between Greece, Ionia, and Lycia.